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Effect of Environment and Genotype on Durum Wheat Gluten Strength and Pasta Viscoelasticity

¹Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Cereal Research Centre, 195 Dafoe Road, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T 2M9. Contribution No. 1735. ²Corresponding author. E-mail: names@em.agr.ca. ³Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre, 1 Airport Road, P.O. Box 1030, Swift Current, SK, Canada S9H 3X2. ⁴Canadian Grain Commission, Grain Research Laboratory, 1404-303 Main St., Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 3G8.

Data on the quality of durum wheat genotypes grown under eight environments (site-year combinations) were evaluated to determine the relative effects of genotype and environment on quality characteristics associated with gluten strength, protein content, and pasta texture. The 10 durum wheat genotypes assessed in this study represented a range of gluten strength types from the very strong U.S. desert durum genotype, Durex, to the medium strength Canadian genotype, Plenty. Considerable genetic variability was detected for all quality characteristics studied. Genotype-environment interaction was significant for all quality parameters evaluated, with the exception of mixograph development time. Genotypeenvironment interaction was most important in determining protein content and least important in determining gluten index, gluten viscoelasticity, and SDS sedimentation volume. The nature of the genotype-environment interaction was evaluated by determining the number of significant crossover (rank change) interactions. There was at least one significant crossover interaction between pairs of genotypes and environments for five of eight quality traits tested. Of 45 genotype pairs, eight and six showed significant crossover interactions for protein content and pasta disk viscoelasticity, respectively. Significant crossover interactions were at least partially due to the differential response of Canadian genotypes as compared with U.S. genotypes. With the exception of protein content and pasta disk viscoelasticity, our results suggest that among the selected sample of 10 genotypes, genotype-environment interactions were minor and due primarily to changes in magnitude rather than changes in rank.